What’s in a Name? Part I

Are you curious yet about what we will be calling ourselves as professional brewers?
Well, don’t hold your breath…

I promise that this blog will be the first public place that we announce our commercial name, but we aren’t ready to do that just yet. One reason is that our vision and branding MAY be location dependent. What that means is that we know HOW we want our brewery to be run and WHERE we would like for it to be, but in reality, it may just not work out that way. Of the several locations that we are pursuing, each has its own personality that may or may not work with the name or names that we would like to use. I know that is vague, but at some point in the future it will make more sense. Alas, don’t fret. You will love the name and branding when we do reveal it.

In the meantime, allow me to spin a tale about the original naming of our homebrew operation and in a subsequent post, the renaming of our homebrew operation.

When Pearce and I first started brewing together, we knew that adding a name to our operation would make it seem like it was more than it really was; a hobby. But we also wanted to immediately add a little credibility to what we “might” do in the future. That being said, naming anything these days is next to impossible if you ever plan to use terms or phrases or names that are actual people, places or things. Basically, if you think of something that isn’t a gobbledegook mash-up of non-words, a minimum of 5 people have already had the thought ahead of you and have bought every instance or combination of letters that would make up a decent domain. This reminds me of the SNL skit about Dillon Edwards Investments…

Pearce and I have our own ideas about what makes a good name, but we agreed that we wanted something that represented our love of the coast, the history of our area and was also a subtle nod to our faith. Talk about a tall order. Well cleanliness is next to Godliness and any good brewer knows that the art of brewing is 10% recipe, 10% skill, and 80% cleaning and sanitation. Our research for the right name led us to a historical item that was once used to clean the wooden decks of ships. The item was known as a holystone, a porous type of sandstone, that legend says was first gathered from the ruined church of St. Helens Cathedral on the Isle of Wight. A holy relic used for cleaning and purification? It represented our coastal heritage, our dedication to brewing sanitation standards, and had just enough veiled faith context as to create intrigue. How perfect! We adopted the name Holystone Brewing and started making our presence known. That is until we decided to change our name…

Stay tuned for the next episode of Planning to Brew where we talk about the death of Holystone and the birth of a new name and brand. You will not want to miss out on that story. Speaking of not missing out… Have you subscribed yet? Just add your email address and we will notify you whenever there is a new post. Scared of spam and other nefarious things from giving out your email addy? Fear not. We will never spam you or sell your information.